Are you feeling stuck in your career, wanting a career change or even thinking about starting your own business? Deciding if you should quit a job you hate or just stick with it can be tough. In this article, you’ll learn the five big fears that keep people from quitting a job, how to overcome your fear of change and how to take action to find a career and work you love.
You’re overflowing with big dreams and ideas for your business (and life)... and that can get in the way of your success. Here’s the problem: Too often the most amazing, brilliant, I’m-making-a-real difference-in-the-world entrepreneurs struggle in their businesses because they’re pursuing too many dreams and goals at the same time.
In this article I share the simple steps to knowing which of your dreams and goals you should act on right now.
Before you head out to your next seminar, workshop or retreat, you’ll want to use the strategies below to help you maximize the results you get while you’re there. Based on my insights from over a decade of being on both sides of the live event fence as both an attendee and producer of live events, here are my 10 Smart Strategies for Getting the Most from Live Events.
Did you know that the largest segment of your Ideal Client pool either isn’t aware of they have the problem you can solve or they are aware of it but not actively looking for a solution? In fact, at any given time, only about 3% of those clients who have the problem you can solve are actively looking for a solution by scouring the internet for answers, asking friends for recommendations, making telephone calls and so on. Most companies are in a dogfight for that 3%, which plants the businesses squarely in the red ocean talked about in Blue Ocean Strategy. If you’re only chasing that 3% with your marketing strategy, you likely find yourself swimming among some big sharks in your field.
However, if you inject greater influence into your messages by setting your clients’ buying criteria, your marketing materials (via Education Based Marketing, as well as traditional marketing copy) will not only ring true to the people who are actively looking for the solution you can provide (a very small percentage of your Ideal Clients), but you will also capture the much more numerous inactive Ideal Clients who have the problem you can solve and who are either aware but not looking for a solution or unaware they even have a problem.
I would argue leveraging your passion into creating the biggest, most profitable business you can and one based on doing good for others is perhaps the noblest path of all. By doing so, you honor your own talents and yearnings and you create the means by which to serve humanity on a greater scale, as well as the resources you can share philanthropically, if you so choose. In fact, pursuing your passion isn’t irresponsible but instead completely necessary to achieve a phenomenal level of success.
But, what if you’ve got the requisite passion and purpose and you’re not finding the levels of success you want? You may feel like you’re spinning your wheels… like you’re working your tail off and it’s getting you nowhere.
If you can’t “get inside your customer’s head”, your emails, marketing messages and programs won’t connect at all or not at a deep enough level to keep your customers coming back again and again. You’ll end up wasting your time and money targeting clients who don’t have the problem you can solve and won’t buy what you’re offering.
You must figuratively turn yourself into your customer and create your messages and learning curriculum from that space. Dive deep into your customers’ minds, their emotions, their motivations, their lifestyles in order to understand them, create products and programs that serve them and connect with them so intimately that they think, “How did she know how I feel? She gets me! And she may just have the solution I’m looking for.” Using this strategy is also how you turn average customers into Raving Fans who happily buy practically everything you offer.
I’ve outlined below 3 Critical Keys to Identifying and Connecting with Your Ideal Customers, each with a series of questions to help you dig deeper and discover exactly who your Ideal Customer is.
Growing a business is tough work, and as an entrepreneur or small business, you may be tempted to try to throw a wide net and capture as many customers as possible, regardless of whether they match your Ideal Customer profile or not. Turning away some potential business customers is not only smart, it’s necessary for your business to thrive.
Guys, I’m here to tell you, size ALWAYS matters! Just to clarify, I’m talking about the passionate and purposeful “why” for being in business and the “why” that drives you to go after your dreams… as in, “Why Size” Matters. (wink)
Why do big, passionate and purposeful whys matter so much? Your “whys” play a major role in influencing whether your business thrives or fails and whether as an enterprising entrepreneur you persevere or give up. Passionate and purposeful why represent your emotional drivers, which are always more powerful than logical drivers. When you have an emotional attachment to a process or an outcome, you’re much more likely to go the extra mile and not only get to the finish line but run through it with gusto.
Contrary to the message of conformity that is often touted in our society (you should look like this or act a certain way for people to like you), letting your genuine character shine will help you stand out in an ocean of sameness and connect with those people who want exactly what you have to offer.
Authenticity begins with bringing your life in alignment with your values. A disconnect between your values and how you show up in life will quickly communicate inauthenticity to those around you and erode your inner confidence. I’ve outlined a quick exercise that can help you get started on the path of embracing your uniqueness and shouting it out to the world.
Call it Higher Self, your Inner Guide, Divine Guidance, Angels, Spirit, God or whatever you will, but I believe we do receive spirit-centered guidance that speaks to us through inner wisdom and connection to the universal flow of energy. It may show up as a “strange coincidence”, a hint, a feeling, or simply a “knowing”. The more you can train yourself to notice and pay attention to guidance, the more your life will seem to flow along easily with fortunate and happy synchronicities lighting a path for you to follow.
Tapping into and listening to that wisdom is truly invaluable – not only will your life be flow along with less effort and stress, you can spare yourself a lot of suffering and life lessons learned the hard way.
